Cuba is the fastest growing market in the history of Airbnb: "'The typical scenario has been the opposite, where hotel companies are the established ones, then Airbnb comes later,' said Sean Hennessey, chief executive of Lodging Advisors, a market analytics firm in New York. 'In Cuba, having the first-mover advantage, as we call it, is a big plus in Airbnb’s favor.'"

Some of Britain's most promising startups are thinking of leaving: "Businesses across the United Kingdom are worried that Brexit will lead to limits on immigration, a stance that would hit the heavily international financial community particularly hard. At Bankable, for example, one of the start-ups housed at Level39, the chief executive is French and the employees hail from Thailand, Nepal, the United States, Italy and France. Only two are British. One of the central underpinnings of the European alliance is that residents can move and work freely among member nations. Companies can hire workers across the E.U. without filing cumbersome paperwork or applying for special visas, processes that can take weeks to complete. But it’s unclear what E.U. immigrants’ status will be once Britain abandons the partnership or how difficult it might become to hire new workers."

Taxes and Regulation

San Francisco is considering a tax on tech companies: "'You have a CEO who cares about kids in Ghana one week or dolphins the next week. Those are important,' she said. 'But the people impacted by displacement in San Francisco are a worthy cause, too.'"

Succession

Here's what Shuly Oletzky learned after her father died without leaving a succession plan for his business: "I sat down with the employees right after Dad passed away. I said, we have a choice to make. I don’t know what I’m doing, I don’t know how to make this product. I just know the end result. If we’re going to make this work, you’re going to have to teach me. I’m going to need your help. They agreed. Without them I would have been hard-pressed to carry on."

Social Media

Instagram is trying to become more useful to businesses: "While Instagram says these new tools are to provide better control for smaller businesses, it’s also a way to re-exert its control on the platform. Influencers rely on their own reach and network of followers to be considered a viable marketing tool. Agencies have formed that bring these accounts together to help sell their services to companies looking to advertise. In a sense, says Quarles, this is 'subverting the system. We think that advertisers and businesses need to proceed with caution because they don’t get the same transparency of who that network is,' he says."

Legal Marijuana

Is pot losing its buzz in Colorado? "Officials in Denver, which is home to one-third of the state’s cannabis market, moved this spring to rein in pot capitalism. The city passed an ordinance capping the number of dispensaries and grow facilities at the present level. But discontent continues to fester in poorer communities, where many of these operations inevitably land. 'We were told that legalization would take drugs out of our community,' says Candi CdeBaca, a community activist who grew up in the mostly Latino and poor Denver neighborhood of Elyria-Swansea. 'The drugs stayed—and the drug dealers changed.'"

A startup called Jane is trying to solve the industry's banking problem: "Jane kiosks are placed in dispensaries, and customers can simply come in, place their orders on the touch screen (or from an app on their phone), insert their cash, and take a receipt to pick up their product. The company has already started rolling out machines around Colorado. The cash is held securely within the machine, and the receipts allow dispensaries to precisely track payments and inventory. It's basically like a marijuana ATM machine — in reverse. The kiosks themselves are manufactured in Colorado for around $15,000 a piece, according to Foster."

Human Resources

After Obamacare passed, a Pennsylvania manufacturer stopped offering health care--and made everyone happy: "By 2014, the company’s workforce had expanded, to about 75 employees, and Rowen estimates that at least 50 of them got health insurance through the exchange. A couple others with spouses who worked at a nearby Harley Davidson facility were able to sign up with the motorcycle maker now that Susquehanna did not offer its own policy. 'Most of my employees were able to get insurance for less than they were paying if they got it through us, while many got it for the first time.' The deductible was lower, too. 'The only employees who really came out badly were older long-term employees who were making enough to get a very small subsidy or none at all. I gave most of these employees raises because our business was doing better, so they came out okay with the change.'"

Here's the problem with trying to force employees to have fun: "Three years ago, a study looked at emails from more than 180 teams that worked in a single Canadian company to track team effectiveness across multiple offices. The best functioning teams had a high level of cohesion with close ties between team members, something that non-work events can help achieve. But groups with too much cohesion were also less successful, according to Sean Wise, an entrepreneurship professor at Ryerson University who conducted the study. It turns out that sometimes group events can camouflage the changes and environment that’s really required to improve work culture on a day-to-day basis."

When Rob Ord was down on his luck, he founded a security business: "Ord’s big thing is hiring veterans, their friends and families, not only because many already have training but also because he wants to give them a boost and find their way in the workforce, just as he found his way. 'We don’t want people who want to be security guards for rest of their life,' said the businessman. 'We don't just hire morons. We hire the best and people who are pretty sharp, looking for a stepping stone, and looking for their next good paying job. We want to keep them just a year or two. They leave and hire us to be their security firm.'"

The Eastern District of Missouri’s prison-to-work program has become a model for inmate re-entry nationwide: "The numbers are daunting. The National Employment Law Project’s “conservative estimate” is that 70 million Americans have some sort of criminal record. Each year nearly 700,000 people emerge from prison. More than half of them will boomerang back within three years without having found legal employment."

Pricing

Amazon is changing the way it prices bargains: "The retailer built a reputation and hit $100 billion in annual revenue by offering deals. The first thing a potential customer saw was a bargain: how much an item was reduced from its list price. Now, in many cases, Amazon has dropped any mention of a list price. There is just one price. Take it or leave it. The new approach comes as discounts both online and offline have become the subject of dozens of consumer lawsuits for being much less than they seem. It is also occurring while Amazon is in the middle of an ambitious multiyear shift from a store selling one product at a time to a full-fledged ecosystem. Amazon wants to be so deeply embedded in a customer’s life that buying happens as naturally as breathing, and nearly as often."

Customer Service

Do companies make their tech support unbearable by design? "Many organizations are running a cost-per-contact model, which limits the time agents can be on the phone with you, hence the agony of round-robin transfers and continually being placed on hold, said Justin Robbins, who was once a tech support agent himself and now oversees research and editorial at ICMI. 'Don’t think companies haven’t studied how far they can take things in providing the minimal level of service,' Mr. Robbins said. 'Some organizations have even monetized it by intentionally engineering it so you have to wait an hour at least to speak to someone in support, and while you are on hold, you’re hearing messages like, ‘If you’d like premium support, call this number and for a fee, we will get to you immediately.'"

Branding

Can you name the most iconic restaurant in every state? "Michigan: Zingerman's Deli. Arguably the best sandwich shop in the U.S., this Ann Arbor institution has been feeding hungry lines of University of Michigan students for 30 years. From the bread to the cheese and the meat, everything is made in-house from local ingredients."

Politics

A restaurant owner in Cleveland says Donald Trump will not be welcome in his restaurants: "Symon certainly wouldn't be the only chef to have bad blood with the 'Make America Great Again' hat mogul: The Donald is currently embroiled in back-and-forth lawsuits with José Andrés and Geoffrey Zakarian after both chefs pulled out of a Trump Hotel project in D.C. following the politician's disparaging remarks about immigrants. Plenty of other businesses have also declared preemptive bans on Trump, from a Minneapolis coffee shop to a Louisville, Kentucky steakhouse, though the latter lifted said ban after reportedly receiving death threats."

Obituary

Starting with a two-person office with seven cars in 1957, Jack Taylor built a $19.4 billion company with 1.7 million vehicles. "Mr. Taylor resisted, regarding the rental-car business not only as a cutthroat industry with a dubious future but also as one that would be 'a big pain,' as he put it — a time-consuming distraction for his leasing sales staff. 'We started out saying, We don’t rent cars,' Mr. Taylor recounted in a corporate history. But after accommodating some good customers, he relented, and in 1963 he began what he saw as a sideline rental business, with 17 Chevrolets, for which he charged $5 a day and 5 cents a mile. But rentals soon thrived, propelled by imaginative relationships that aides struck up with insurance companies. Adjusters would offer a rental car, often those of Enterprise, instead of cash to a driver making a claim. Passage of no-fault insurance legislation also stimulated rental growth by eliminating lengthy arguments over who should pay for repairs after traffic collisions. This helped open up a vast, largely untapped 'home city' market of local residents who needed temporary transportation for a variety of reasons — car repairs, car theft or simply mundane purposes like hosting out-of-town relatives, driving older children to college or impressing an important client. 'Nobody even knew that the off-airport market existed then,' Mr. Taylor recalled."

I oversee entrepreneurial coverage at Forbes, including the Entrepreneurs channel. Before that, I was small-business editor of the New York Times, where I started the You’re the Boss blog. I have also been a top editor at Inc. magazine and Inc.com – and many other magazines,...